No you have the wrong impression. The evidence suggests Sir Savile took advantage of his position to do despicable things and if true he deserves to burn in hell. However the BBC have a duty of care to all visitors to it's facilities as well as their employee's, and as much as the hospital patients, nurses and managers and knew about Jimmy, it's likely so did BBC executives.

quality analysis.I think you make a good point about the met's condemnation of Saville, although I don't quite agree.

However the BBC have a duty of care to all visitors to it's facilities as well as their employee's, and as much as the hospital patients, nurses and managers and knew about Jimmy, it's likely so did BBC executives.

How do you define 'duty of care'? My guess would be that it will be slightly different to how it was defined back in the 1980s for instance; different by more if you go further back. Groping was a part of life up until and including the 1980s. I know. I was old enough to work back then and I was a late teen/early 20s woman in the 1980s. Groping of young women whose future employment was in the power of the men who groped went on in offices, in factories, in hospitals, in the media, in the entertainments business - everywhere. Women rarely spoke about it because nobody was listening, usually because it was men who were the only people in positions of power to stop it and more often than not those men would either not believe the women, be of the same mindset as the gropers, or not care. Some did. Some always have cared. But they were the unknown minority. Women just learned how to deal with it.

That lots of women are now coming forward as having been abused by Savile is no surprise because today what went on back then is now classed as abuse. Back then generally speaking what went on was termed 'taking liberties'. Real abuse was rape and the stuff that dads did to their children or teachers to pre-pubescent students. I'm not talking about that area because although one or two accusations of rape against Savile have been made, most of what has been said appears to fall under the heading of groping.

To focus upon the BBC in terms of the groping culture is to err completely because ALL organisations will have had their gropers, of that I am 100% certain. Instead of turning this into a witch hunt against the BBC, what should really be under discussion is how to ensure nothing like the times before the 1990s, when gradually people began to wake up to what was happening, should ever be allowed to happen again and where it does, women and men alike should ensure that the groper is disciplined and, if appropriate, fired. This doesn't simply apply to underage girls, who back then were often seen as being willing because often they were adoring. It should apply to all women (and men obviously) regardless of age, regardless of their employment status and regardless of their response to celebrity (in the case of teenagers).

How do you define 'duty of care'? My guess would be that it will be slightly different to how it was defined back in the 1980s for instance; different by more if you go further back. Groping was a part of life up until and including the 1980s. I know. I was old enough to work back then and I was a late teen/early 20s woman in the 1980s. Groping of young women whose future employment was in the power of the men who groped went on in offices, in factories, in hospitals, in the media, in the entertainments business - everywhere. Women rarely spoke about it because nobody was listening, usually because it was men who were the only people in positions of power to stop it and more often than not those men would either not believe the women, be of the same mindset as the gropers, or not care. Some did. Some always have cared. But they were the unknown minority. Women just learned how to deal with it.

That lots of women are now coming forward as having been abused by Savile is no surprise because today what went on back then is now classed as abuse. Back then generally speaking what went on was termed 'taking liberties'. Real abuse was rape and the stuff that dads did to their children or teachers to pre-pubescent students. I'm not talking about that area because although one or two accusations of rape against Savile have been made, most of what has been said appears to fall under the heading of groping.

To focus upon the BBC in terms of the groping culture is to err completely because ALL organisations will have had their gropers, of that I am 100% certain. Instead of turning this into a witch hunt against the BBC, what should really be under discussion is how to ensure nothing like the times before the 1990s, when gradually people began to wake up to what was happening, should ever be allowed to happen again and where it does, women and men alike should ensure that the groper is disciplined and, if appropriate, fired. This doesn't simply apply to underage girls, who back then were often seen as being willing because often they were adoring. It should apply to all women (and men obviously) regardless of age, regardless of their employment status and regardless of their response to celebrity (in the case of teenagers).

I posted very early on that it was a cultural thing and that we can't judge the past on our current values, however paedophilia wasn't socially acceptable back then just like it isn't now. Savile was a predatory paedophile and carried out these acts in the full knowledge of managers and executives of the BBC. He must have! What he did was a criminal offence and it's neither morally right nor absolvable to turn a blind eye when you are a government owned institution! Allowing predatory paedophiles to operate on your premises is by and large a criminal offence of the highest order, thus not having a duty of care to those people it invites to it's premises to take part in it's programs.

That duty of care is now being tested by lawyers (again I have posted on this previously) who will no doubt, take the BBC and every other institution that turned a blind eye to the cleaners. They deserve it.

I posted very early on that it was a cultural thing and that we can't judge the past on our current values, however paedophilia wasn't socially acceptable back then just like it isn't now. Savile was a predatory paedophile and carried out these acts in the full knowledge of managers and executives of the BBC. He must have! What he did was a criminal offence and it's neither morally right nor absolvable to turn a blind eye when you are a government owned institution! Allowing predatory paedophiles to operate on your premises is by and large a criminal offence of the highest order, thus not having a duty of care to those people it invites to it's premises to take part in it's programs.

Please define a paedophile. And bear in mind, with parental permission, someone can get married who is under the legal age of consent. Or they certainly could in the 1980s. In the not so distant past, which celeb was it who married a 13 year old English girl, with her parents full consent? His name is on the edge of my memory but I can't remember.

Please define a paedophile. And bear in mind, with parental permission, someone can get married who is under the legal age of consent. Or they certainly could in the 1980s. In the not so distant past, which celeb was it who married a 13 year old English girl, with her parents full consent? His name is on the edge of my memory but I can't remember.

i think you may be under a misunderstanding. the legal age for marriage in England and Wales is 16.

The minimum legal age for getting married is 16 years old. In England and Wales the written consent of the parents or Guardians is required for persons who have not reached 18 years old and have not been previously married. If either of the persons is below 18 a birth certificate must be produced. It is preferred that all persons produce such evidence.

In 1929, in response to a campaign by the National Union of Societies for Equal Citizenship, Parliament raised the age limit to 16 for both sexes in the Ages of Marriage Act. This is still the minimum age.

Also, I don't go with the "things were different then" argument. As someone who was 16 in 1962, I can tell you that they were not.

i think you may be under a misunderstanding. the legal age for marriage in England and Wales is 16.

Indeed.

I was getting mixed up anyway. The case I was thinking of was Bill Wyman, Rolling Stones, who dated 13 year old Mandy Smith when he was 47, marrying her at 18. I remembered him as marrying her underage but not according to my Google searches (which I had to resort to as I couldn't remember who it was I was thinking of!). Anyway, he was never prosecuted. That happened 18 years ago. Whether you accept it or not, things were very different back then. They weren't right, but they were different. I too know. I was in my teens and early 20s and I'm female. Being a teenage male in 1962 does not mean you know what it was like being a teenage female in the early 80s! The world changed in those 20 years you know. They've changed since then. I'm now in my 40s and don't recognise teen life as I knew it. The same applies to you, to us all.

Understood. In addition I'm from Manchester and frequented the Plaza where Savile was manager. He also came to out College at lunchtime to play records.. Talk was rife about his retinue of groupies to and from his flat in Lower Broughton, near the Rialto, if I recall.

Assualting a woman at work has in my experience never been acceptable at any of the places I have worked and would have got you sacked in 1962, 1972, 1982, 1992, 2001 and 2012.

Assualting a woman at work has in my experience never been acceptable at any of the places I have worked and would have got you sacked in 1962, 1972, 1982, 1992, 2001 and 2012.

You call it assault. Not all men called it that. And I doubt you would have known a thing about it had it been going on, and chances were it was. It certainly went on in places where I worked - local authorities on the whole - and I experienced it.

So do not tell me such things did not go on. They did. Fact. I'm glad you call it assault. That is exactly what it should have been called then, as well, but it was not. It was called 'tough s'hit' and we had to deal with it. Thankfully, that's generally all gone now and should men ever 'take liberties' now, we can slap them with just about everything they could think of. But that WAS NOT the case in the 1980s (or the 1970s I'm sure as that was apparently worse).

You are giving a good example, though, of the reason why women didn't speak up. They were never believed.

Depends on the situation Saintslass. A young girl was vulnerable if working as a secretary for some guy with wandering hands. But so was a young lad if working on a shop floor full of women-and there were many factories like that. It never happened to me but I know lads who had their trousers taken down or off after being held down by women workers.

I'm not really disagreeing with you because a lot of it was swept under the carpet but JohnM is also correct in that it was never actually acceptable and people did actually get sacked or done for it.